Fugitive arrested after eating at Country Club Plaza in KC

Off-duty officer recognized fugitive, left restaurant to wait for arrest

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A 30-year-old fugitive wanted in Kansas and Oklahoma was discovered while dining at a nice restaurant in Kansas City.

Virgil Tillman, of Kansas City, Kan., was eating a restaurant at the Country Club Plaza on Sunday when a U.S. Marshal who’d been looking for him since February decided to eat there, too.

Tillman has been wanted in Kansas since July 2013 on firearms, theft and drug charges, and Oklahoma officials had been seeking Tillman since March 2013 after he failed to appear in court on drug and illegal weapons charges.

Matt Cahill, acting deputy U.S. Marshal in Kansas, said the deputy was off-duty when he spotted Tillman at the restaurant, The Kansas City Star reported (http://bit.ly/NZ2GLX )

“He’d been chasing him around the city for quite a while but kept running into dead ends,” Cahill said. “Then, out of the blue.”

Cahill said the deputy also recognized Tillman’s dining companion as a woman who had denied knowing Tillman’s whereabouts. He said the deputy decided to wait with police for Tillman and the woman to leave so they wouldn’t create a disturbance in the restaurant, where dinner for two can cost more than $100.

“They let him finish his meal,” Cahill said.

The woman, who had a small child with her, left first. When Tillman started to leave, he noticed the officers and tried to hold the restaurant doors shut to keep the officers from entering. It didn’t work. Tillman was arrested on the spot.

“It was definitely one of those ‘oops’ moments for a fugitive,” Cahill said.

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